E. Lynn Harris Biography

Author

Born Everette Lynn Harris, in 1955, in Flint, MI; son of James Jeter and
Etta W. Harris (a factory worker).
Education:
Graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1977.
Religion:
Baptist.

Addresses:

Career

Worked as a salesman for IBM, 1977–82; worked for Wang Labs and
AT&T, 1982–1990; self–published first novel,
Invisible Life,
through his own Consortium Press, 1991; signed deal with Doubleday,
1992;
Invisible Life
reprinted as a trade paperback by Anchor Books, 1994; sequel
Just As I Am
published by Doubleday, 1994; narrated
Dreamgirls
on Broadway, 2001; taught English, University of Arkansas at
Fayetteville, 2003.

Awards:

Blackboard's Novel of the Year (for best African–American
novel), 1996, 2002, and 2003; James Baldwin Award for Literary
Excellence for
If This World Were Mine,
1997; Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, 2000;
Poets & Writers
"Writers For Writing" Award, 2002; University of Arkansas
Citation of Distinguished Alumni, 1999.

Sidelights

E. Lynn Harris, "the bestselling African–American male
novelist of the '90s," according to
Publishers Weekly
's Alissa Quart, has sold more than three million copies of his
novels about successful black professionals in dramatic romances. His
vivid tales of black men who date women yet carry on hidden
relationships with other men shocked and fascinated his readers, who
made his self–published first novel a grassroots phenomenon and
attracted a major publisher's attention. The novel's
title,
Invisible Life,
became a metaphor for the experiences of closeted gay and bisexual
blacks. His novels were often semi–autobiographical, yet his 2003
memoir,
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,
still shocked readers with Harris' painful stories of surviving
child abuse, alcoholism, depression, and the struggles of being a
closeted gay man.

Born in Flint, Michigan, in the summer of 1955, Harris moved to Little
Rock, Arkansas, with his mother at age three and grew up believing his
stepfather, Ben Harris, was his father. He was the oldest of four
children in the house and the only son. Harris' memoir is full of
heart–wrenching stories of his stepfather beating and verbally
abusing him. A babysitter showed him his birth certificate—which
included his real father's name—at age 12 as a way of
consoling him about the abuse. His mother, Etta, divorced his stepfather
when Harris was 13. Two years later, Harris met his father, James Jeter,
while
visiting relatives in Michigan. Their reunion was tragically brief;
Jeter was killed in a car accident the next year.

Harris attended high school in Little Rock. He secretly began to
consider himself gay in high school, especially after visits to gay
pride dances at George Washington University while in Washington, D.C.
for a program that gave low–income black students brief
internships in government agencies. He went to the University of
Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he became a cheerleader and the first
black year-book editor at a major southern university. Harris casually
dated women in college, but the college romance that meant the most to
him was a secret relationship with a male athlete who would later
inspire a central character in
Invisible Life.

Though he graduated with a degree in journalism in 1977, Harris got a
job as a salesman for IBM in Dallas. He stepped into social circles that
defined his life for years and his fiction for years after that.
"With a good–paying job, I had become a member of the
black brunch–eating bourgeoisie," he recalled in his
memoir,
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.
As he had done in high school and college, he pretended to be from a
middle–class family, embarrassed by his actual
working–class roots. "My employment with IBM was like an
entry card with the A crowd, and I quickly became friends with
television personalities, doctors, sports figures, and lot of beautiful
black women," he wrote. He also frequented a gay club in Dallas,
a fact he kept secret from his straight friends. He was making more than
$100,000 a year before he turned 26. He moved to New York City in 1982,
worked for Wang Labs and AT&T and cultivated circles of friends
that included Lencola Harris, a former Miss Arkansas. Later, he lived in
Chicago and Washington, D.C. and continued to work in computer sales. He
still mostly kept his straight friends and gay friends separate, and
struggled with depression and difficult romantic relationships.

Some of Harris' friends fell sick with AIDS in the late
'80s, and when visiting them made him too sad, he wrote them
letters. "One of my sick friends was so moved by these letters
that he said, 'Promise me, you will write; you have to tell our
story,'" Harris told
Publishers Weekly
's Quart. Profiles of Harris often stated that he left a
lucrative sales job to write
Invisible Life,
and as of late 2003 his website still asserts this, but the version of
the story recounted in
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted
is more complicated. Harris attempted suicide in 1990 after a long
slide into severe depression and alcoholism left him isolated from work
and most friends, broke, and facing eviction. He entered therapy, quit
drinking, and began living with friends, first in Washington, then in
Atlanta. He interviewed for computer sales jobs there, but turned down a
job offer after deciding he needed to do something new. He was still
unemployed, living off disability insurance and money from friends and
family, and staying with a friend when he began writing
Invisible Life.

Its main character, Raymond Winston Tyler Jr., was a bisexual black
lawyer and Harris' luckier alter ego. "I gave Raymond the
life I would have wanted for myself," he told the
Detroit Free Press.
"Two parents who adored me, middle–class lifestyle,
popularity." He wrote in the first person, expressing his
feelings through Raymond's. Several publishers rejected his
manuscript, so Harris formed his own company, Consortium Press, and
began selling his book himself in late 1991 to black beauty salons, AIDS
organizations, and independent book stores.
Invisible Life
quickly became popular in Atlanta, and an article about the book in an
Atlanta newspaper helped Harris get the attention of an agent and a
publisher. Harris signed with Doubleday in 1992, and in 1994, Anchor
Press republished
Invisible Life
as a trade paperback, while Doubleday released the sequel,
Just As I Am.

Harris' philosophy was simple, he told
Publishers Weekly
's Quart: "It's 'let me tell you a story
about the people I know.'" Tales of his friends and
ex–lovers, transformed into fiction, earned Harris a huge
following. "Though the characters were fictional—sort
of—the soap opera–like drama in their lives was so real it
kept readers talking long after they'd finished the last
pages," the
Detroit Free Press
journalist stated. "Talking and wondering, especially about how
many supposedly straight men were keeping sexual trysts with men on the
down low, secretly, as several of Harris's characters
did." Harris debuted a new set of characters for 1996's
And This Too Shall Pass,
about a star athlete accused of rape, which made the
New York Times
best–seller list. He won the James Baldwin Award for Literary
Excellence with the novel,
If This World Were Mine,
about four friends and the secrets they record while in a
journal–writing group. Doubleday paid him more than a million
dollars for 1999's
Abide With Me,
the final book in the trilogy that began with
Invisible Life.
Soon, readers began to look forward to a new Harris book coming out
every summer.
Not A Day Goes By,
published in 2000, and 2001's
Any Way the Wind Blows
both debuted at number two on the
New York Times
best–seller list.

Though Harris' protagonists and anti–heroes are usually
gay or bisexual black men, most of his readers are black women, he
acknowledges. "The fit is
not entirely surprising," observed
Publishers Weekly
's Quart, "as Harris has a passion for both black men and
the minutiae of everyday romantic relationships." Still, Harris
told
Ebony,
"I want anyone who enjoys reading to pick up my book."
Critical appraisal of his novels is torn between those who accept them
for what they are—dramatic, steamy romance novels that glamorize
and sometimes satirize upwardly mobile black life—and those who
do not, such as Cleveland
Plain Dealer
critic Rochelle O'Gorman, who compared Harris to pulp romance
novelist Jackie Collins and called his work "simplistic"
and "hackneyed." Harris has reacted angrily to being
identified as a black commercial writer, but has also admitted he is not
a great writer like less–known, critically acclaimed novelists,
and he has claimed to keep critics' points in mind while writing
subsequent novels.

In interviews, Harris revealed some of the pain of his life before
writing, but saved the full story of his struggles for
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,
a memoir that took several years to write. The book opens with the
story of his suicide attempt, then cuts to his childhood and the abuse
his stepfather inflicted on him. It ends at the close of 1991, as he
emerges from depression and
Invisible Life
begins to find an audience. "This story has a happy
ending," he told the
Advocate
's Austin Foxxe. "I'm here to say that
brokenhearted people, whether they've had their hearts broken by
love or family members or what have you, can survive it. They can find
happiness, and they can find love."

Harris appeared on Broadway in 2001, as the narrator of the play
Dreamgirls.
His E. Lynn Harris Better Days Foundation, which supports aspiring
writers, won the
Poets & Writers
"Writers for Writing" Award in 2002. He became the first
three–time winner of Blackboard's Novel of the Year award
for best novel by a black writer in 2003. As 2003 ended, Harris was
teaching an English class at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas
at Fayetteville and was working on his next novel. He had recently moved
into a condo in Atlanta, and also had an apartment in Chicago. Harris
had completed a screenplay for a so–far–unproduced remake
of the film
Sparkle
and signed three options that may lead to seeing his novels adapted as
films.

Selected writings

Invisible Life,
Consortium Press, 1991.

Just As I Am,
Doubleday, 1994.

And This Too Shall Pass,
Doubleday, 1996.

If This World Were Mine,
Doubleday, 1997.

Abide With Me,
Doubleday, 1999.

Not A Day Goes By,
Doubleday, 2000.

"Money Can't Buy Me Love" (novella), published in
Got To Be Real: Four Original Love Stories,
New American Library, 2000.